Friday, May 11, 2007

Punched any Sea Life lately?

One good thing about writing 31 updates in one month, is that it can clear out your back-log of unfinished posts. One such post is a News article forwarded to me by Campbell back in February. I use Campbell’s morning emails as my main source of World News, and here is that particular story:

Man attacks shark with bare hands

Friday Feb 16 13:54 AEDT

A South Australian man attacked a shark with his bare hands after drinking copious amounts of vodka and deciding to turn the tables on one of nature's deadliest predators.

The ABC reported that Phillip Kerkhof was the talk of his hometown at Louth Bay after wrestling the bronze whaler shark from shallow water onto the local jetty.Kerkhof became annoyed when the shark began chasing his squid lures and said he climbed down a ladder into the water and silently stalked the 1.3 metre predator."I just snuck up behind him and eventually I went for the big grab and I fluked it and got him," he said.

"He's just thrashing around in the water but then he was starting to turn around and try to bite me and I thought 'well, it's amazing what vodka does'."Kerkhof emerged from the fray unscathed, although his jeans were ripped by the shark's razor-sharp teeth.

"It's not something I'd recommend to do. When I sobered up I thought about it and I said, 'I'm a bit of an idiot doing it'," he said.

Wow, great story. But there was one quote that annoyed me:

When I sobered up I thought about it and I said, 'I'm a bit of an idiot doing it'

I mean, what the fuck? Idiot!? This is the single greatest anecdote I’ve heard all year, the man is a Hero, not an idiot. Can you imagine if somebody greeted you in a bar and told you this:

Phil: "Yeah mate, not been up to much. Went fishin’ pissed on Vodka, a Shark kept upsetting me Squid Lures, so I grabbed it by the tail and beat the shit out of it".

Gosh, if I was a woman and I overheard that conversation, I would be positively swooning.

I was fishing for Squid off Edithburgh Jetty with a Malaysian by the name of Johnny Yee, back in the exciting year of 1997. We were getting frustrated, as our Squid-jag had small hooks on it. This meant that we would catch a Squid, but it would fall off the lure whenever we tried to lift it out of the water. This happened about four times until I declared "Fuck it" and instructed Yee to gently drag the next Squid in the water up to the Jetty Stairs, in which case I would walk down and pull the Squid out of the water myself. We put the plan into motion.

The following Microsoft Paint Illustrations will depict why you shouldn’t try this yourselves:

I stumbled back up the stairs rubbing Ink out of my eyes, and all of the local Fisherman turned to stare at me. One particularly Seasoned old Sea Salt pulled his pipe out and blurted the following:

"Garrr, look at the Landlubber been bested by a wee Squiddy! Gar har har har!"

And then all of the Fisherman burst out in unified mocking laughter. There is nothing crueller than a Fisherman’s jeers, and I was so traumatised by the experience that I became an emo and started wearing mascara and shit afterwards.

SIDE NOTE: Campbell will be pissed off if I write about Squid Fishing and Edithburgh and not mention the following story, so here it is.

One time a few years back there was a group of us sinking beers in the Troubridge Hotel, while Campbell and Mac were down on the Edithburgh Jetty fishing for Squid. A few hours later in the afternoon, the tranquillity of the pub was shattered as Campbell and Mac kicked the doors open presenting their fishing bucket.

"Check out what we just fucking caught!"

They screamed. We didn’t need to lean over to see into the bucket, as the Squid they had caught was so fucking big it’s head was poking up out of the top. One of the locals had this to say:

"Garrr, that be the biggest damn Squiddy I evers did see."

And he was right. The fucking thing was enormous. We cooked up enough Calamari rings to feed most of the Yorke Peninsula for a week.

2 Comments:

Twin Cam Bill said...

Mac caught the squid. We left it on the sink to die for a few hours, then came in pissed much later - Beef kissed it before Stuie stuck his finger through its' head. It made calamari the size of a dessert bowl with weet bix in it. It remains the largest 'non-giant' squid known to man kind.

Can we have a historical post on growing up in pubs? Stories of black Jesus, foxy boxing, schnitzels, oysters and butchers - the old mans bar tricks. So many moments.